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THE 



Doctrine of Jesus concerning God : 



A SERMON 



REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, 



Preached at St. George's Hall, London, 



November 26th, 1871. 



BALTIMORE: 
JOHN P. DES FORGES. 
1872. 



ft 



THE 



Doctrine of Jesus concerning God; 



A SEEM ON 



BY THE 



REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, 



Preached at St. George's Hall, London 



November 26th, 1871. 



yttM OF CO/v 



U.S. 

N^*^ WASH VI 

* BALTIMORE: 
JOHN P. DES FORGES 
1872, 



THE 

DOCTRINE OF JESUS CONCERNING COD. 



A SERMON BY THE REV. CHARLES VOYSEY, PREACHED 

at St. George Hall, London, November 26, 1871. 



" After this manner, therefore, pray ye^: Our Father who 
art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name." Matthew, vi, 9. 

We come now to the consideration of Jesus 
of Nazareth as a teacher of religion, and will 
endeavor to answer the question — "What did 
he teach about God ? " 

Once more I will repeat the caution respect- 
ing our regard for his authority. However 
much we may find ourselves in agreement 
with his teaching, we absolutely refuse to ac- 
cept him or any other great teacher as our 
authority and guide. We form our religious 
belief for ourselves, just as he did, adopting or 
rejecting at pleasure the different views pre- 
sented to us ; and we are led by our own 



4 

minds, consciences and hearts to embrace what 
seems to us the noblest and pure conception 
of what God is. But we have a double inter- 
est in pursuing this inquiry — on the one hand 
to discover the highest development of the old 
Hebrew monotheism as it presented itself in 
the teaching of the Nazarene, and on the 
other to contrast this pure and simple and 
cheering belief of his with the creed of Chris- 
tendom. 

It is astonishing to find how very little 
theology there is in the sayings of Jesus as 
recorded in the first three gospels. Excepting 
that baptismal formula at the end of Matthew, 
which it is most unlikely that Jesus ever 
uttered, we never find him speaking of God 
except as one individual Being. There is not 
the faintest allusion to any number of Persons 
in the Godhead, to any 11 Logos," or " Eternal 
"Word," or " Eternal Son." On more than 
one occasion the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is 
alluded to. In Luke's version of the Sermon 
on the Mount, we find this term " Holy Spirit" 
taking the place of the "good things" recorded 
by Matthew. 

He is recorded to have said something about 
casting out devils by the Spirit of God, and 



5 



on the same occasion to have said that blas- 
phemy against the Holy Ghost was a sin 
which could never be forgiven. When and 
where this phrase "Holy Ghost" was first used 
and what it meant, it is impossible to say and 
useless to inquire. We only know that the 
pure monotheism of the Jew did not prevent 
the prophets and psalmists from using this 
term. The Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit 
are terms several times repeated in the Hebrew 
Scriptures, and I do not think it will be ques- 
tioned for a moment that on their lips these 
phrases were purely poetical and had no refer- 
ence to a composite Godhead. Ask the Jew 
of to-day, who ought to know best what their 
own sacred books mean, and they will tell you 
invariably that this phrase was used to ex- 
press the Divine action on the hearts of men. 
Desires after holiness, devotion to duty, strict 
integrity of heart and tongue, and the like, 
were all manifestations of a Divine influence 
which they spoke of under a metaphor singu- 
larly appropriate, namely the air, which was 
at once invisible and yet perceptible, life- 
sustaining and yet irresistible when in violent 
motion. None of the Jews ever dreamed that 
the Spirit of God was another God. Nor ever 



6 



intended to convey the idea that the two were 
really distinguishable. Had our Athanasian 
views about the Holy Ghost been familiar to 
Jesus, he could not possibly have ignored the 
Holy Ghost as an object of worship equal with 
the Father in his own prayers and in the 
prayers which he taught his followers to use. 
Moreover, what he is said to have said about 
the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against 
the Holy Ghost is capable of a rational expla- 
nation perfectly consistent with his belief in 
the absolute oneness of God ; and at the same 
time is fatal to the Christian theory of his 
own equality with God. The Jews had been 
attributing his cure of diseases or "casting out 
devils," to the power of Beelzebub whereupon 
he says it is an awful blasphemy to attribute 
a good work to an evil spirit ; that if they 
liked to blaspheme him, they might do so 
with impunity, but it would be an offence 
never to be forgiven if they blasphemed the 
Holy Spirit by which all good works were per- 
formed. If therefore this text be claimed by 
Trinitarians as a proof of the personality of 
the Holy Ghost, it cuts the ground from under 
their feet as regards the cq-equal Godhead of 
Jesus. And if the three Gods are only one 



God, bow can one blaspheme the Holy Ghost 
without blaspheming the Son, and how can 
one blaspheme the Son without blaspheming 
the Holy Ghoet? 

Of theology proper there is indeed a scant 
supply in these Synoptic discourses. The 
most dogmatic speeches on record, which I 
shall proceed to quote, are in fatal contradic- 
tion to the Christian ■ creeds. In Matthew, 
xix, 16, 17, we read: "And behold, one 
came and said unto him, 'Good master, what 
good thing shall I do that I may have eternal 
life?' And Jesus said unto him, 'Why 
callest thou me good ? There is none good 
but one, that is God. But if thou will enter 
into life, keep the commandments?'" Ac- 
cording to Orthodoxy, all the time Jesus was 
saying these words, he knew himself to be 
God Almighty ; but we will leave any candid 
mind to say whether or not these words of 
Jesus could have taught the doctrine of his 
own Godhead to the humiliated inquirer. So 
far from it that he implied rebuke to the in- 
quirer for having even called him good. 

Surely, here was a chance for him to preach 
the articles of the Christian faith. A man 
who had led a blameless life and was struck 



by the moral excellence of Jesus wishes to 
hear from his own lips the terms on which he 
could obtain eternal life. Instead of reciting 
to him the doctrines of the Athanasian creed, 
or of the Nicene creed, or even of the Apostles' 
creed, instead of preaching to him the doc- 
trines of the Atonement, or the Sacramental 
theory, Jesus denies his own share in Godhead 
altogether, he will own that " none is good 
save one, and that is God," and tells his 
friend, — "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the 
commandments." 

The young man in his simplicity replies : 
"All these have I kept from my youth up ; 
what lack I yet ?" Now was the time to say 
to him, — u Ah, but you have not on the robe 
of imputed righteousness ; your keeping the 
commandments has only been partial and up 
to the light you had. The first and great com- 
mandment is — 1 Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ and thou shalt be saved; ' " or in the 
words of John — 

" ' This is his commandment, that we should 
believe on the name of his only begotten son.' 
You are trusting in your own righteousness and 
not depending on the perfect righteousness of 
Christ." Now would have been the moment 
to say to this earnest inquirer what has been 



9 



preached for ages in some of the Christian 
Churches as the pure gospel, and which is ex- 
pressed with a horrible vigor in the following 
verses : — 

Nothing either great or small, 

Nothing, sinner, no ? 
Jesus did it — did it all 

Long, long ago. 
Weary, working, burdened one, 

Wherefore toil you so ? 
Cease your doing ; all was done 

Long, long ago. 

Till to Jesus' work you cling 

By a simple faith, 
" Doing " is a deadly thing ; 

" Doing " ends in death. 
Cast your deadly " doing " down, 

Down at Jesus' feet ; 
Rise in him, in him. alone 

Gloriously complete ! 

Just compare these verses with that in the 
Sermon on the Mount : "Not every one that 
saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the 
Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the 
will of my Father which is in heaven." Was 
there a word in the whole of this discourse of 
Jesus with the rich young man to justify such 
a doctrine as these verses contain ? No, just at 
the turning-point in his life, as it were, when 



10 



that young man was solemnly asking his road 
to heaven, Jesus, the so-called Founder of 
Christianity, makes answer: "If thou wilt 
be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and 
give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure 
in heaven ; and come and follow me." 

I make no further comment on this reply, 
but to press home the unanswerable question — 
" What authority in these sayings of Jesus 
have the Christians for their doctrine ? " 

One more dogmatic discourse is worthy of 
our especial notice. You will find it in Mark, 
xii, 28, 29, 30: — "One of the scribes, per- 
ceiving that he answered well, asked him, — 
'Which is the first commandment of all?' 
And Jesus answered him [not by the words of 
the Decalogue, but by quotation from Deuter- 
onomy], — "The first of all the commandment 
is, Hear 0 Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, 
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is 
the first commandment, and the second is like 
unto it, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor , 
as thyself. There is none other commandment 
greater than these." Now if Jesus spoke 
these words (and the churches teach us to 



11 



believe that he did), what insolence it is for 
them to claim on the authority of Jesus our 
acceptance of the Athanasian creed, which 
says — " Whosoever will be saved, before all 
things, it is necessary that he should hold the 
Catholic faith, which faith except a man keep 
whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall 
perish everlastingly." How dare they, in 
Christ's name, place not only on a level with, 
but above the two great commands the neces- 
sity for Baptism, sacramental grace, a belief 
in the Trinity, Incarnation and Atonement, 
Justification by faith and the repudiation of 
good works as being not pleasing to God, if 
done before justification or without the grace 
of Christ (whatever that may mean) and as 
having without doubt the nature of sin. They 
blame us for discarding the authority of the 
New Testament, yet they practically discard 
it whenever they please, while professing to 
submit to its every letter. 

Had only the teachings of Jesus come down 
to us, we should never have heard a word 
about Christian doctrines — never a word about 
the " original righteousness " of Adam — never 
a word about his fall, nor a word about the 
original sin which all his posterity have in- 



12 



herited — never a word about God's immutable 
curse, nor of our redemption from it by Jesus' 
death. Those ill-starred words—" He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and 
he that believeth not shall be damned," — 
once attributed to Jesus, have alas for Ortho- 
doxy ! been condemned by the critics as hav- 
ing formed no portion whatever of the oldest 
extant M8S. Even that slender prop has been 
snatched away, and the poor old fabric of 
Orthodoxy is tottering to its fall. 

So far we have failed to discover anything 
in the sayings of Jesus to justify even one of 
the great doctrines of Christianity. We will 
now turn to those frequently repeated expres- 
sions about God which reveal to us his own 
religious feeling and belief, and which are only 
consistent with the purest monotheism. 

A few of his parables, such as that of the 
lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and the lost 
son, and the Sermon on the Mount, are the 
most prominent among the religious discourses 
of Jesus. And from these we can draw but 
one inference, namely, that Jesus himself was 
deeply imbued with the true filial spirit towards 
God. God was more to him than mere Jeho- 
vah. The phrase, "God of hosts," translated 
by one of our Bishops into "God of battles," 



13 



as far as we know, never fell from the lips of 
Jesus. Nothing that could cast a shadow over 
the infinite tenderness and friendliness of God 
entered into his conceptions of Deity. The 
name which above all others he loved to use, 
iu speaking of God to men and in addressing 
God in his own prayers down to his latest 
breath, was " Father." I am speaking now 
more especially in reference to the Sermon on 
the Mount and the three parables alluded to. 
I do not deny that among other recorded say- 
ings and discourses this image is clouded over 
and disguised by threats of eternal vengeance 
and by traces of partiality, which is only 
another name for injustice. But the whole tone 
of the passages under consideration is so unmis- 
takably tender and lofty as to leave upon the 
mind the most exalted conception of God's 
friendliness and fatherliness that we have hith- 
erto heard of. Even if he said those other things, 
this at least was his best, his highest mood. 

We must remember that he had around him 
a multitude variously composed, from Galilee, 
Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond 
Jordan, and that he addressed these various 
peoples all in the same strain without marking 
any distinction between Jew and Gentile. 



14 



Every reader of the Bible will remember bow 
to this mixed, multitude he kept on repeating 
the phrase — -"Your heavenly Father," and 
reminding them at every turn that they were 
all. God's children and unspeakably dear to 
their Father in heaven. To the perfunctory 
Pharisee who paraded his religious observances 
he says : " When thou prayest, enter into thy 
closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray 
to thy Father in secret, and thy Father who 
seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." To 
the anxious hoarder of riches and to the care- 
worn poor he says : " Take no thought for the 
morrow. Take no thought for your life, say- 
in a—' what shall we eat ? or what shall we 
drink? or wherewithal shall we be clothed?' 
For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye 
have need of all these things." To those who 
doubt the friendliness of God he says : " What 
man is there among you whom if his son ask 
bread, will he give him a stone?" "If ye, 
then, being evil," [i. e. taking them at their 
worst,] " if ye, then, being evil, know how to 
give good gifts unto your children, how much 
more will your heavenly Father give good 
things to them that ask him?" 



15 



Whatever be the wisdom or the reason of 
these sayings, they indicate that Jesus repre- 
sented God to that mixed multitude as a kind 
and tender Father, accessible to all alike, evil 
or good, Pharisee or publican, Jew or Gentile, 
and enforced the return of good or evil in these 
words — "Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you, that 
ye may be the children of your Father who is 
in heaven ; for he maketh his sun to rise on the 
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the 
just and on the unjust." He spoke as one who 
himself had learned in the discipline of life the 
exceeding preciousness of the heavenly Father's 
care, — -who had seen in him everything to love 
and to trust to, every promise of hope for the 
future. 

In the three parables named, we find the 
most pure and simple Gospel which has ever 
been preached to men who were suffering either 
from excessive self-reproach, or from the infa- 
mous threats which priests had uttered to terrify 
their slaves. Is a soul lost ? Then God will 
never rest till it is regained. Why, even the 
shepherd would leave a whole flock in the wil- 
derness to seek and to save the one sheep which 
had gone astray. Even the thrifty housewife 



16 



will not rest till she has found the coin which 
rolled so perversely out of sight. Will God, 
then, lose a single soul that has wandered from 
the right way ? Is not the love of the Father 
in heaven for his erring child something greater 
than that of the shepherd for his sheep, or of 
the poor woman for her bit of money ? But 
this is not all. The lesson has yet to be brought 
home through the highest affections which 
belong to humanity, and so Jesus tells the story 
of the lost son — the son not lost by accident, 
but by his own waywardness, self-indulgence, 
degraded habits, whom his earthly father never 
forgets, never ceases to love, and will welcome 
with fondest embraces, should he ever return 
trusting to the old tie of natural affection. He 
lets his son depart, foreseeing all his debase- 
ment, and waiting sadly and patiently for the 
evil to work its own cure. When the day 
comes for repentance, the son retraces his steps. 
Before he can get near his old home, he rushes 
into his father's arms ; before he can speak a 
word of his confession, his lips are sealed by 
his father's kisses, and instead of justly earned 
reproaches the prodigal hears nothing but the 
utterances of his father's joy, — " It is meet that 
we should make merry and be glad, for this 



17 



my son was dead and is alive ; was lo3t, but is 
found." How it was that be did not first sac- 
rifice on an altar the eldest son who bad never 
done anything wrong, is for orthodox Christians 
to explain. I only say that, as far as I under- 
stand it, this parable is the Gospel — the only 
view of God worthy of the same of V God's 
spell," or God's message. For it is the word 
of love and forgiveness which he speaks through 
every human heart, that God is indeed a 
Father, not only to the good, but also to the 
evil. 

Can we wonder, then, that, if this was the 
tone of Jesus in speaking of God, he should 
have taught all men to pray as their first 
prayer — " Our Father, which art in heaven, 
hallowed be thy name?" If there be a God 
at all to whom we owe all the finer feelings of 
our nature, and our instinctive aspirations after 
goodness, and our greatest and most unselfish 
affection, then the only name we can give to that 
God is the name of Father, " Father in heaven" 
to express our confession of the naked poverty 
of our highest conceptions and of our feeble 
language to express the whole truth. But still 
"Father," because it is the highest title — the 
name which is above every name — the expres- 



18 



sion at once of all that is just, impartial, con- 
stant, unwearied, self-sacrificing, tender and 
loving. 

I cannot pray this simple prayer, I cannot 
utter this brief but comprehensive Te Deum 
without all my antagonism, being excited, and 
my indignation roused against the Christian 
doctrines beneath which it has been so long 
buried. The words, it is true, are still babbled 
in Christian churches; but they are denied, 
trampled on, and befouled by the various 
schemes of redemption and doctrines of atone- 
ment which have invaded the sanctuary. The 
more angry that men are because I will not 
call Jesus Lord, Lord, because I will persist in 
showing that he was only a man like ourselves, 
the more it delights me to show that these dis- 
courses and parables of his which no tampering 
or artifice can ever put out of sight, prove him 
to have been no Christian at all, but a Theist, 
a Jewish Theist, and that he learned his pure 
monotheism from his mother's lips, and from 
the Hebrew scriptures ; and that because he 
believed in earnest what others around him 
only said they believed, and acted out kind- 
ness, instead of only talking about it, he grew 
up to know that God was in * very truth the 



19 

common Father of all mankind, and would act 
a father's part towards every child of man. 

I would conclude this morning by calling 
your attention to a very powerful attack made 
upon the " Christian Evidence Society " by 
Thomas Scott, Esq., of Ramsgate, not only 
published, but written by him. The pamphlet 
is entitled — " The Tactics and Defeat of the 
Christian Evidence Society ;" and I earnestly 
recommend my hearers to read it themselves 
and to get as many as possible of their Ortho- 
dox friends to read it too. 

I will close with a short extract from the 
work itself [pp. 8-9] : — 

" The so-called ' Infidel ' may turn round on 
the self-styled Christian advocate and say, ' I 
am a truer Christian than you are. I have 
really a Gospel to preach to you and to all 
men, the very Gospel which Christ preached. 
I believe that all things are the work of an 
Eternal Mind or Spirit, to which my mind or 
spirit stands in a definite relation. I believe 
that this Eternal Mind or Spirit is absolutely 
just, true, and loving ; and I cling to all the 
consequences which are involved in this con- 
viction. I believe that, as His Will is to bring 
us to our highest good, in other words to bring 



20 

our mind into perfect conformity with his 
Divine Mind, so also He has the power to do 
this ; that this Power and Will are bringing 
about the perfect vindication of his justice, and 
that his justice and mercy are synonymous 
terms. I hold that, whatever be the origin or 
descent of man, God has never been absent from 
any of His creatures ; that from the first dawn- 
ings of his sense He has been educating and 
training men, by a long process indeed and a 
painful one, through the indefinite series of 
ages, until they have reached their present 
state, and that He will continue this work in 
the long series of ages yet to come. I believe 
that because we live in Him now, we shall con- 
tinue so to live after we have undergone the 
change which we call death ; that the denial of 
this cuts at the root of all love ; for what is the 
meaning of growth in the knowledge of God, 
what is the meaning of patience, forbearance, 
truthfulness, unselfishness, if the wheels of a 
steam-engine may end all my concern with 
them at any moment, or if I may escape from 
my duty by throwing myself into the sea ? 
I need not go further. I have said enough to 
show you that I am not an infidel, and, as I 
think, to show you that my faith is vastly 
higher, and is far more nearly and really the 
faith of Christ, than is yours." 



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